


Everything Ends

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Ender Series - Orson Scott Card
Genre: Angst, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Memorials, Prompt Fic, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2603861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor attends a Speaking for one of his Companions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Ends

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was written for [lizzie_marie_23](http://lizzie_marie_23.livejournal.com) in [caramelsilver](http://caramelsilver.livejournal.com)'s [Three Sentence Ficathon 2011](http://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/140906.html), in response to the prompt: _[Ender's Game/Doctor Who, the Doctor, He listens to a Speaking and knows it to be true](http://caramelsilver.livejournal.com/140906.html?thread=2665066#t2665066)_.

His latest companion -- Zora, lovely young woman, if ultimately too rash for her own good (though not the good of the double planetary system she'd saved with her sacrifice) -- had always insisted on coming home to visit her family after every subjective three months. If he didn't bring her home now, he'd never hear the end of it. So he wrapped up her mangled body in a clean white cloth that the TARDIS mournfully provided, popped it into a stasis chamber, and set a course for Nádej.

Her family was Old Catholic, but Zora had opted to have a secular memorial with a Speaker for the Dead instead of a priest. The Doctor had long since made his apologies to her family and escaped, but two subjective years later he found himself in the back of the church listening to a stranger tell an abridged version of her life. The Speaker didn't know about the whole 'travels in time and space' thing, or about Zora literally saving worlds, but somehow that didn't matter. She summed up and shared the heart of the woman the Doctor had known: bright and brave and unconcerned with herself when she could be out _doing_ things, righting wrongs like a knight errant with the Doctor as her crotchety old wizard advisor.

"Like Arthur and Merlin," Zora had always said, no matter how many times he'd told her that legend was from completely the wrong cultural tradition for her to cite. She'd just grinned and ruffled his hair.

"To Zora, a hero," the Doctor whispered along with the Speaker, as the simple ceremony drew to a close, because that was truer than true. He could see why she'd wanted this form of closure for her family.

For a moment he thought about hiring a Speaker for himself, dropping by now and then to explain what he'd done, what he'd meant to do, and how he'd tried so desperately to rationalize the difference... but the moment passed and he slipped out the door while the others went forward to share more memories of Zora and her too-brief life.

Everyone died. Only the best deserved to be remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> I was clearly thinking of the Tenth Doctor in terms of characterization, which I suppose retroactively places this somewhere between _Journey's End_ and _The Waters of Mars_. Of course, given that Speakers and Speakings are a known and unremarkable thing, it's probably AU anyway... but you never know; that tradition could actually catch on at some point in the _Doctor Who_ universe. Stranger things have happened!


End file.
